[snoogins]

Hi everyone!

Just had a site redesign based on a Wordpress theme, your thoughts would be very much appreciated:

My link

So far on my to do list is:

1. Format the articles properly
2. Spend some time on SEO
3. Get a new logo at the top
4. Think about some advertising space

One thing I am worried about is the forums as they seem basic with not much room to grow, any thoughts/ideas? I looked into buddypress but the them isnt compatible. I would love a forum like this one but I presume it expensive and not wordpress compatible. Are forums dying? I want to build a community

Cheers,

Leon

This post has been edited by snoogins: 30 December 2011 - 01:25 PM

[Sogo7]

1. You cannot rely on the browser telling the visitor an RSS feed exists for the page (or site)so a visible link is required. (did you know twitter also has RSS feeds?)

2.a. Several RSS readers for mobile phones will only recognise a URL where the target filename ends with dot XML
2.b. Typing a URL into a smartphone is tedious so would explore using QR codes to send the user to a mobile friendly version of the site or the RSS feed(s).

3. Personal Pet Hate: drop down menus with multiline descriptions eg:

Saving Time & Staying
Sane »

It just looks wrong and would either widen the menu box or rewrite the description to make it shorter thus giving it a bit more 'punch', the same could probably be said of the top two article headers.

Save Time Stay Sane

[snoogins]

Awesome just what I am looking for! Hopefully I have sorted 3 Would you mind giving me some advice on sorting the other points? Looking into phpBB3 for the forum instead of tal.ki, anyone had any experience of this?

This post has been edited by snoogins: 30 December 2011 - 05:43 PM

[Sogo7]

Well putting an RSS icon on the page like this example from feedicons.com is a start and a quick Google search turns up plenty of nice variations (see http://media.smashin...g-icons/rss.jpg) Then it's just a simple matter of adding a link from that to the RSS feed xml file.


Making this

http://www.businessbird.co.uk/feed/

look like this suitable for RSS readers

http://www.businessbird.co.uk/feed/site_feed.xml

involves some additions to the .htaccess file with a rewrite rule something like this.

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteBase /
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(/feed)/(.+?)\.xml$ /feed/index.php 

If you are not familiar with htaccess
and regex syntax then do have a read up from one of the many web tutorials
before playing around with this file.


QR codes like this example are again really simple to create thanks to Google.

https://chart.googleapis.com/chart?chs=220x220&cht=qr&chl=http://www.businessbird.co.uk/

and can contain URL links or just plain text. [220 x220 is the size of the image but you can make them much smaller and the white border can be removed with a graphics editor package]

[snoogins]

thats great, thanks so much

[D.Schuster]

the bird looks like the twitter bird, avoid that.......

[TheNickyYo]

Whats the site about?
Also it doesn't validate.
http://validator.w3....=Inline&group=0

[snoogins]

thanks!

[4colourprogress]

TheNickyYo, on 06 January 2012 - 06:52 AM, said:

Whats the site about?
Also it doesn't validate.
http://validator.w3....=Inline&group=0

Sites don't have to validate, as long as there aren't any big mistakes on a page you can have errors.

[eCenica]

Site looks OK.

Agree with comments about the bird logo. What I suggest is strengthening your brand by tweaking your colour scheme so it fits whatever logo you choose.

Also for us the photos under your slider don't really encourage clicking them. Have you tried swapping them out with words instead?

Eg:

Network | Impress | Tips | Present | Win ...

Also those stock photos seem a little generic/bland. This is always the downside to using what I'm guessing is stock photography. One tip for spicing those photos up is to incorporate your brand into them. Maybe make them link with your text on the right, rather than just a square shape.

Also. Coming from a web hosting perspective, rather than a designer - if you're not already doing so already, it's worth using a WordPress cache plugin to speed up loads times. WP Super Cache and W3-Total-Cache are good choice.

Also. If you're looking for a WordPress SEO plugin go for Yoast WordPress SEO, over All In One SEO.

All the best

Richard

This post has been edited by eCenica: 06 January 2012 - 11:01 AM

[WebZzz]

You should make the grey container for the text in the slider bigger by extending it more to the left or increase the size of the image. For eg.

http://desmond.image....png&res=medium

Hope it helps!

[empek]

TheNickyYo, on 06 January 2012 - 06:52 AM, said:

Whats the site about?
Also it doesn't validate.
http://validator.w3....=Inline&group=0

Wordpress sites rarely validate.

Check out the validation for the default theme that comes pre-installed with Wordpress!

[Ben Evans]

Why don't you make the bird a black bird to avoid looking like Twitter, that way it will be more business like.

The small links at the top when you go to another page are horrible and don't work.

There are a few padding / alignment issues. The menu red focus text is bad. The images are quite boring and very stock. There is some grey text on grey backgound which is hard to see. But apart from that I like it